Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Feminine thought process (versus that of males)

As everyone knows very well, there is a huge difference between the thought processes of males and females. I've been doing some thinking on what this difference is, and have come up with some crude ideas. I present them here.

First, I'll justify why I am bothering to address this question. The evolutionary process that governs our development as a species governs both our biology and our psychology (I would say the latter is a subset of the former, to a great extent). The recent human cultural changes have been driven to a large extent by advances in our technology, and the environmental changes that have been a result of these (abundance of food, population increase, and etcetera). Technological progress is relatively fast when compared with natural environmental changes. Biological (and psychological) evolution is designed to adapt in pace with natural changes in the environment (climate, etcetera), and is not fast enough to adapt to the recent (past couple of millenia) changes in our social structure.

Indeed, male-female relationships are a foundation of our society at economic, cultural, and biological levels. Smooth functionality of these is paramount to the success of our human society. Recently our society has been experiencing instability in male-female relationships, as is well known. From a male perspective, I can say that female behaviour has been an inconvenient mystery to me, and with this motivation, I've spent some time, recently, thinking explicitly on the matter. What follows is what I've gathered through from my thoughts.

The framework of human mental processes might be described, at a very general level, as bipartite: A stream of emotions; a separate stream of logical deductions. When a human evokes his thought process to guide his behavior, these two streams of thought reach independent conclusions for what the best course of action would be. Subsequently, some sort of supervisory control mechanism executes behaviour that is aligned with either of the conclusions delared by one of the streams, or possibly some compromise between the two.

The difference between male and female thought process lies in the nature of this downstream supervisory control.

Once in a while I've heard/read sarcastic references, by males of course, to 'chick logic'. The problem of understanding and predicting 'chick logic' often remains an unsolved and very serious problem for most males, throughout their lives. The problem is in the approach to understanding. The problem is, 'chick logic' is a misnomer.

Again, the difference between male and female thought process lies in the nature of the downstream supervisory control. Keep in mind that I speak of general male and female characteristic; almost no one is purely male or purely female. In males, the control strives to align itself with the conclusion reached by the stream of logical deductions formed from the circumstannces. The behaviour is carried out, and the emotions are dealt with in the aftermath. In females, the control strives to align itself with the conclusion reached by the stream of emotions. The behaviour is carried out, and the logical faculty is then charged with the task of rationalising the emotional behaviour in the aftermath.